Wynn Resorts CEO Craig Billings appeared to break with his Strip counterparts, offering a neutral opinion on prediction markets — the business platform that has run afoul of state gaming regulators in Nevada and elsewhere. 

"We don't take a political position on prediction markets because we don't have skin in the game," Billings said at the Global Gaming Expo on Tuesday during a roundtable discussion with the CEOs from Caesars Entertainment and MGM Resorts International. 

"The broad distribution of online gaming, the broad distribution of betting, offers some benefit to Las Vegas," said Billings, whose company operates Wynn Las Vegas and Encore Las Vegas. "I'm not opining on the legality."

He added Wynn has not seen any direct effects from prediction markets, "but certainly indirect impacts [could happen] over time."

Billings appeared to be the outlier in the prediction market discussions, which were prevalent throughout the four-day conference and trade show at The Venetian Expo. Breakout sessions included state gaming regulators, casino operators and sports betting companies in opposition to the activity.

American Gaming Association CEO Bill Miller, in his opening remarks, said prediction markets accept sports wagers without paying gaming taxes and ignore state gaming laws and tribal sovereignty. He said the legal challenges to the businesses have prediction markets losing 90 percent of their court casinos with states, including the last 15 cases.

"If this ultimately ends at the Supreme Court, we have the facts on our side and are well positioned to win." Miller said.

Billings, however, compared the legal battle to the Strip's opposition to California tribal gaming ballot questions in 1998 and 2000 when each received more than 60 percent support. A quarter century later, California's tribal gaming market accounts for more than $12.6 billion in annual gaming revenue.

Billings said many Strip resort operators "very surreptitiously funneled money" to the campaigns against tribal gaming.

"Of course, they lost, and what did we end up with? We ended up with a whole army of people in California that were inert to coming to Las Vegas," Billings said.

Billings' comments didn't mirror those of his contemporaries.

Caesars CEO Tom Reeg compared the prediction market battle with the effort against daily fantasy sports operators more than a decade ago. Many states, including Nevada, banned the activity. However, once the Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that states could legalize and regulate sports betting, companies such as DraftKings and FanDuel have been licensed in more than two dozen states.

"We've lived through this before with [daily fantasy sports]," Reeg said. He suggested prediction market operators "would benefit" from state regulation. 

He pointed out that before Caesars announced its $17.6 billion merger with Fertitta Entertainment in May, Kalshi had put up a prediction market line on whether or not Caesars would be acquired in 2026.

"There was nothing in their regulations that prevented me from placing a wager on that, which is astonishing," Reeg said. "Obviously, I didn't. What we're talking about here is amusing, but I worry that something awful is going to come out [or] going to happen in this interim period because of the lack of regulation and oversight. That's going to tar all of us, whether we are operating in the regulated markets or in the prediction markets."

MGM Resorts CEO Bill Hornbuckle said it was "obscene" that prediction markets attempted to operate in Utah — one of two states along with Hawaii — that bans all forms of legal gaming. 

"That [state] wants nothing to do with gambling. It's their right," Hornbuckle said. "It's no tax, no jobs, and I could go on and on. The cavalier approach by some of these guys in their leadership group is hurting the industry. If they want to play by the rules, they want to come to Nevada and get a license and do what we all do, then God bless them."

Unlike Caesars (Caesars Sportsbook) and MGM Resorts (BetMGM), Wynn doesn't operate a nationwide sports betting business. The company launched WynnBET, an online sports betting and online gaming platform in July 2020. The business was live in 12 states when it began shutting down the operations in August 2023, saying "the ultra-competitive sports betting landscape was a drain on resources." 

BetMGM CEO Adam Greenblatt said in an interview that the company is not interested in getting into the prediction market realm because "our stance is aligned with our states, our regulators, politicians and tribes." 

During the recent World Cup soccer tournament, he said unregulated prediction markets "sliced heavily" into the traditional sports betting platforms, "representing 75 percent of all the spend in that category."